David's Blog

Andrew "Tomkitty" Tomkiewicz

This morning during our organizational meeting in Decatur, Alabama our twenty person org heard that Andrew Tomkiewicz passed away Saturday morning. He was involved in an car accident at a four-way stop. I was told that he was hit on the driver's side and died on impact.

Our sales manager, Kian Ostovar, flew to Huntsville, AL to talk to all of us about the accident and help us deal with it emotionally. He said that it was the first time he had to deal with a death on the book field. In fact, he had to make a number of calls and look way back to the last time a death occured during a summer with Southwestern.

We all listened to Kian, Mike Yandre, and Peter Martinello talk about Andrew, his brother Mike who is also in our org this summer, Andrew's family, and what we need to do now that we've heard this news. Finally, Andrew's roommate, Nick "N-Rod" Rodriquez, came up and talked about Andrew for a while. He told us a few funny things that had happened during his five weeks of living with Andrew and reminded us all of the qualities that we all liked about Andrew. It was funny, because these typically unsung qualities were all mentioned. We all laughed and appreciated who Andrew was for a few minutes and then most of us broke down shortly after, because all those things that made up this great guy are gone now. Once Nick broke down into tears Kian let us all go out and spend some time alone or talking with our friends. I pretty much broke down too during this whole thing. I had never had an acquaintance, peer or a friend die before. I went for a long run to use up the rest of my fifteen minutes and when the meeting resumed it kinda went on semi-normally.

I really feel badly for his older brother, Mike. Those two guys are really close, and Mike was already going through a lot before this accident and loss. Now he is going to feel this whole in his life for the rest of his days. I actually spoke with a lady the other week who had lost her brother eight years earlier, and I was just asking her a few questions about some things and she broke down in tears all over again. It must be rough.

Since I have been doing this job, every week I have eaten at least five of my twelve book field meals at various cemeteries across Jackson county. I'd take about a half an hour off and just eat and think about things and read the names and dates. Not exactly what Southwestern people would call positive, but I found it to be soothing or something -- I don't know. I was just drawn to them. I don't know if I'll be doing that this week.

Posted by David at June 13, 2004 06:53 PM